[Eugene Church]

MY LIFE IN 2024
EC's Life Is An Encore In '24

Reading Joe Posnanski's fine book featuring some of the most interesting and entertaining moments in baseball history, it brought to EC's memory my wonderful old Wilson baseball gloves... goodness gracious, they were a thing of beauty and perfection because I spent many hours breaking them in, fondling and caressing them with neetsfoot oil... I treated my gloves with tender love and care... they were sorta like a sweetheart... EC never threw my beloved gloves in the dust and dirt... nope, EC treated my gloves and my gals with great respect... Posnanski listed the 5 best barehanded plays in baseball... one of them involved Cincinnati's Johnny Bench, when he was a rookie.

"Wit, Quips and Quotes From the Diamond Minds"
Here is an excerpt from Joe Posnanski's entertaining book "Why We Love Baseball - A History in 50 Moments"... actually he has 108 moments in the book.

There were no gloves in the earliest days of baseball. Those were the days -- baseball's first great chronicler Henry Chadwick wrote -- "when men donned neither glove nor mask... and left the lemonade drinker aghast."

When players started wearing gloves in the 1870s and 1880s, they tended to be flesh colored: they didn't want the fans to notice them. A. G. Spaulding, a first baseman who not only wore a glove but made it black so that everybody would see it. Soon after, he would sell gloves, as Spaulding became one of the biggest sporting goods manufacturers in the world.

Gloves have been an essential part of baseball fielding for almost 150 years.

And yet -- who doesn't love a great barehanded play?

Gerry Arrigo was pitching against the Dodgers. Arrigo was a 27- year-old lefty and by this point in his career he was a veteran. The catcher that day was Bench, who was only 20 years old and a rookie.

Bench noticed early on that Arrigo's fastball was off: he just didn't have the usual zip on it. Bench naturally started calling for more curveballs. Arrigo kept shaking him off. As the game went on -- and the Dodgers kept on hammering away on Arrigo's fastball -- Bench called for curveballs with more and more urgency. Arrigo continued to shake him off.

Finally Bench called time out and went to the mound to tell Arrigo that he didn't have anything on his fastball.

"I'll tell you what, rook," Arrigo said, or words to that effect, "why don't you shut the #*&# up and get behind the #&*# plate and catch whatever I #*#&# throw."

Bench shrugged and went back to home plate and called for another curveball. When Arrigo shook him off one final time Bench called the fastball. Arrigo threw it, and Bench reached out with his right hand and caught it barehanded.

"You should have seen his face," Bench said.